There are 62 counties in the state of New York. The original twelve counties were created immediately after the British takeover of the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam, although two of these counties have since been abolished. The most recent county formation in New York was in 1914, when Bronx County was created from the portions of New York City that had been annexed from Westchester County in the late 19th century and added to New York County.[1] New York's counties are named for a variety of Native American words, British provinces, counties, cities, and royalty, early American statesmen and military personnel, and New York State politicians.[2]

Five of New York's counties are coterminous with the five boroughs of New York City and do not have functioning county governments, except for a few borough officials. New York City is considered the county seat of these five counties: New York County (Manhattan), Kings County (Brooklyn), Bronx County (The Bronx), Richmond County (Staten Island), and Queens County (Queens). Because each borough has a separate main Post Office (and Queens has four of them), the county seats of the five boroughs are often stated in terms of those main post offices: New York (Manhattan), Brooklyn, Bronx, Staten Island, and Jamaica (Queens). However, the communities served by those main post offices are all within the city limits of New York. In contrast to other counties of New York state, the powers of the five boroughs of New York City are very limited, and in nearly all respects are subordinate to the city's.[3]

The FIPS county code is the five-digit Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) code which uniquely identifies counties and county equivalents in the United States. The three-digit number is unique to each individual county within a state, but to be unique within the entire United States, it must be prefixed by the state code. This means that, for example, while Albany County, New York, is 001, Addison County, Vermont, and Alachua County, Florida, are also 001. To uniquely identify Albany County, New York, one must use the state code of 36 plus the county code of 001; therefore, the unique nationwide identifier for Albany County, New York, is 36001. The links in the column FIPS County Code are to the Census Bureau Info page for that county.[4]